by Liz Schulte
“I won't, sir. I'll see you soon.” I transported back to my apartment, fuming. Holden! Holden was the new commander. Holden was dead set on extinguishing our race. I’d expected more from him even if he was a jinni. He may not owe me any loyalty, but he damn well owed it to her. Maybe Ezra was right. Maybe Olivia was the best person for the job. If any of their bond was real, if any of it still remained, perhaps she could get through to him. Maybe she could stop this war before it ever had a chance to start. As far as I knew, Holden had no idea she was back. There would be a huge element of surprise. Maybe Olivia didn’t have to see him at all. If I could just talk to him, tell him she was here, maybe he would stop. He had to listen to sense. What would either of us gain from a war? I called Olivia to let her know we wouldn't be meeting the next day. I had something I needed to do.
Tracing him was easier than expected. I'd already deduced that he must be living in Chicago. After a few informative visits to some of my more established guardian friends in the area, I discovered the new club I nearly took Olivia to was also the newest jinn hotspot. After that, finding his address wasn’t very difficult. Olivia had moved right into the heart of his realm. She only lived a few blocks away. How could I have let this happen? I should have been keeping track of his whereabouts. I once again failed to protect her.
Standing outside of his door, I loathed to reopen this chapter but had no choice. I knocked. There was no answer. I knocked harder. Part of me felt the urge to walk away, to deal with him later when I had a clearer head.
If you don’t confront him, Olivia will, I reminded myself. The stern words worked. Anything was better than the two of them seeing each other again. I knocked a third time with enough force to rattle the door. The door yanked open and Holden appeared, surly and threatening—pretty much exactly as I remembered him.
“I swear if this isn’t important I will pull your liver out through your nose and feed it to you—” His cold eyes met mine mid-threat and recognition flashed in them. He used his hand as a shield from my light and grimaced. “Do you have a death wish?”
“We need to talk.”
“The fuck we do.” Holden started to shut the door on me, but I put out a hand to stop him.
“It's about Olivia.” Her name nearly lodged in my throat. I hated to even say it to him. He couldn’t have her again, but the effect of just her name was what I had hoped for. He reopened the door looked at me with a hard expression.
“Olivia is dead. There’s nothing more to say.” He sounded weary.
It was as I expected. He didn't know. It was now or never. If I told him, he would let me inside. If I kept it from him, hope of a peaceful end was lost. In good conscience, I could hide Olivia no longer. “She’s not.”
He shut his eyes and his jaw tightened. “I hope for your sake that you’re not playing games right now. I will kill you, Quintus. I owe you nothing.”
“But you owe her.”
Holden beckoned me inside, his face an icy mask of indifference. Still shielding his eyes, he asked, “Can you not control that insidious light?”
“Your soul has grown darker. My light didn’t bother you this much before.”
He ignored my comment. “What do you want?”
“I want you to stop. I know you don’t care about humans or anything other than yourself, but at one time, you may have cared for her. If you insist on starting a war with the guardians, she will probably die. You owe it to her to allow her a chance at a happy life.”
He stood in complete stillness and stared. “You’re saying Olivia is alive. Where is she? How long?”
“Not long.”
“When?” he shouted, all feigned nonchalance melting away. Underneath was raw emotion that hit me like a baseball bat to the gut. He was a mass of exposed nerves.
“Less than a year.”
“A year.” He shook his head and paced across the room, before sinking down onto the couch with his head in his hands. “No one bothered to tell me. She's been back for a fucking year, and I was kept in the dark. After all I did, I was denied this knowledge.” He looked me directly in the eye. “Why?”
He couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t have expected to be kept in the loop on this. He was a jinni for crying out loud. “You had no right to know. She's a guardian and you are a jinni. If anything, she needs to forget you, to move on with her life. This is Olivia’s second chance, and I intend to let her have it. What did you expect, Holden, to live happily ever after? Did you think you could go out and condemn souls all night while she works all day to save them? Would that have made either of you happy? You have nothing left to say to one another. The chapter in her life that involves you is over, and thank God for that. Leave her alone, but do this one last thing, I implore you. If you ever cared for her, please do not start this war.”
He was across the room in a blink, his hand crushing my throat. “I didn’t have a right to know? No right?” He spoke slowly and dangerously, his grip tightening. “You will not use my love for her against me. What we had transcends everything else.”
“If that is so, then why did she not tell you she was back?” I managed to croak out.
Holden shook his head as if trying to dislodge what I just said. "She loves me." His hand loosened slightly.
"She loved you. She's not the same person," I lied. He couldn't have her, not then, not now, not ever. Immediately he renewed the crushing force on my trachea with greater enthusiasm.
“I don't know what war you speak of, but if you come here again to use Olivia to your advantage, I'll rip off your arms and gut you. Kill you slow. Do you understand me?”
I nodded because I could not speak. Holden dropped me to the floor. “Get out.”
The pain raging through me had nothing to do with my damaged neck. I made a mistake. Holden wouldn't help us. We would have to stop this on our own.
Twenty Three
Quintus was a really, really nice man.
Quintus was a good man.
Quintus didn't lie to me.
Quintus was handsome and had the most adorable dimples I'd ever seen.
So why didn't I want him? I sat miserably on my bed, trying to decipher what in the hell was wrong with me. Tonight would have made any girl happy, but since I got back home, the only thing I felt like doing was crying. I crawled out of bed and wandered into my closet. It still held only one item of clothing: Holden's shirt. I stripped from my nightshirt and slid my arms into the garment. My eyes closed and my other senses took over. The soft stroke of the expensive material against my skin and subtle traces of his smell made me light headed. I almost believed he was waiting for me in the next room. I wanted to hear his voice, feel his touch.
The sound of my phone ringing brought me back to reality. I answered it, not at all surprised to hear Quintus on the other end of the line. It wasn’t like Jace or Marshall or those other two ridiculous guardians called me.
"Do you know what time it is?" I asked, annoyed he would call so late. Or was it early?
"You don't sound like you were sleeping," he said practically.
"That's not really the point. What did you need?"
"We won't be meeting tomorrow. I have some other matters of business to attend, so you have the day off."
What was I supposed to do with a day off? The idea scared the hell out of me. I had no friends, no family, no money. . . . Was I supposed to sit and twiddle my thumbs all day? Resisting the temptation to peek into Holden's mind was hard enough at night. I might not make it a whole day. "No one needs saving tomorrow? Couldn’t I do an assignment alone? Or can start looking for the missing guardians."
Quintus cleared his throat. "Someone always needs our help, Firefly, but you aren't ready to be out on your own, and I cannot be there. As for the guardians, I told you, it isn’t a problem.”
“What about Jace?”
Quintus sighed. “Take the day off. Relax. Have fun. These days are few and far between."
"I'm counting on it," I mumbled
.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing." A whole day. I guess it was time to see how much temptation I could take. Cold loneliness over swept me. "I’ll see you the day after tomorrow then."
I went back to bed and slid between the covers. Another night of dreams of being tortured and shot. Oh boy.
The next morning when I could stay in bed no longer, I sat up stiffly. It was barely dawn and I’d only managed to sleep a couple hours, but I was thankful they were over. I dressed for a run and left the building in the soft light of the breaking day. I jogged to Michigan Ave then north towards Lake Shore Drive and the beach. Following the shoreline I strove to clear my mind of all thought.
I will beat this., I am stronger than this. I repeated the mantra over and over again until the words fell in time with my steps. I ran harder and harder, letting the burning in my lungs overshadow all other feelings and loving every moment of it. When I could run no further I stopped, hands pressed into my knees as cool air gushed in and sweat ran down my neck. Slowly I straightened and began walking back. The sound of the water stirred something peaceful and accepting in my core. I didn't have to do anything other than deal with what was in front of me. If Holden discovered I was back, I would deal with it. If he never discovered it, then slowly, piece-by-piece, I would let him go. If something grew out of my friendship with Quintus, then so be it. I wasn't looking or asking to be in love again, but Quintus was my only friend. If this was what he wanted, I would give us a shot. The only thing I could control was my number of connections in this world. I never had a lot of friends, but I intended to change that. It was time to come out of my shell.
By the time I made it back home, I gave up completely on the idea of going back to that coffee guardian place. I didn’t want to hang out with guardians, though I did like Marshall there wasn’t a guarantee he would even be there. This was Chicago. Surely there were more than just guardians here. There were plenty of people, supernatural and not. I could make my own friends. There was no rule they had to be guardians, at least no rule that was relayed to me. Once I showered and changed, I hit the streets like in my photo hunting days. I quickly dismissed my desire for a camera. Today wasn’t about that. I wasn't going to hide behind a lens. I was going to meet people. Introduce myself. Be outgoing.
I walked slowly down the street, people watching. Now that I had grown used to seeing the Abyss, it was easy to ignore it. And if I didn’t acknowledge the Abyss, I didn't see the supernatural people—they were mere glimmers in the corner of my eye. It was too easy to fall back into my human inclination to ignore them, just as I had always done. Today, however, I was determined to see them, to find my place among them. It was amazing just how many there were in Chicago. About every third person I passed wasn't human. All of them looked at me suspiciously as I watched them.
"Not a friendly lot." I mumbled to myself as a strange horned creature gave me the stink eye. Maybe making friends wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. Being social had never been my strength.
"You'll have to excuse them. They aren't used to humans watching them so openly," said a voice behind me.
I turned to see a pretty girl, with long amber colored hair and skin so bronzed it nearly shimmered, leaning against a nearby building, arms crossed over her chest. She wasn't human, I was sure of that, but I couldn't quite place what she was. Her face was too smooth, her eyes too cat-like, and her voice too purring to ever be human.
"I'm not human," I said, looking directly into her feline eyes.
She approached with a graceful gait and circled me like I might be lunch. She sniffed the air on either side of my shoulder. "You look human, smell human, if you aren't human, what are you?"
"Bored," I said giving her one of Holden's patented expressions. "What are you?"
"Hungry," she said with a wide grin. "Do you want to get lunch?"
I had no idea what to make of this person. I couldn’t tell if she was a threat or just curious. "Do you invite strangers to lunch often?"
Her shrug was the most graceful movement I had ever seen. She made me feel like a frumpy troll next to her smooth liquid motions. "I can already tell I'm going to like you. Human, or whatever are, not many people would have the balls to stare down the whole of Chicago's Abyss. You're fearless. I like that in a person."
"Olivia," I said, holding out my hand to her.
"Femi." She took my hand in a surprisingly firm grasp. "You aren't human, are you? I can feel it in your skin." A pleased smile spread across her face.
"I told you I wasn't."
"People lie.” She released my hand. "You really do look like a human. Out with it already."
I smiled at her impatience. "I’m a guardian."
"Bullshit." She laughed. "I can recognize a pain in the ass, holier than thou guardian a mile away. I’m not fooled, try again."
I joined her laughter, but didn’t feel it. I had suspected I was a bad guardian; now she had confirmed it. I wasn’t nearly holy enough. Perhaps I would have been better off as a jinni, I thought for the umpteenth time. "What makes you think I’m not a guardian?"
"Well, you're talking to me. You don't have a stick up your ass. But most importantly," she tapped my shoulder, "no light."
Right, I’d forgotten about that. It felt so natural to keep it repressed I did it all the time, without thinking. I focused and released my will, letting the light halo my skin—but not so much as to make a spectacle of myself. "Is that better?" I asked.
Her greenish yellow eyes widened, as if seeing me for the first time. "You weren't joking." Her hand reached out towards me, but stopped mid-air. "May I?" she asked, suddenly seeming nervous.
"Sure."
Her fingers grazed mine and her eyes widened even further. "Holy shit," she said under her breath, then smiled at me. "You're not like any guardian I've ever seen, are you?"
I pulled my light back, uncomfortable. Would it kill anyone to just let me fit in for once in my life? "I guess not."
She nodded, regained composure. "That's cool. I'm rare too."
"And what are you?"
"Have you heard of Sekhmet?"
I shook my head.
"Yeah, not many here have. She’s the Egyptian warrior goddess of healing. That's what I am."
"You're a goddess?" I had little doubt my own eyes were as wide as hers had been.
"No, the first of our kind was. We are now simply called Sekhmet. We are born of her power and follow her will."
I nodded. A warrior goddess of healing? I couldn’t even begin to understand what that meant. "So what is it you do?"
Femi laughed. "I’m a bounty hunter. Not much call for warrior goddesses anymore."
"Oh. How does one become a bounty hunter?"
She looked at me skeptically. "How long have you been a guardian?"
"Not long."
She nodded as if that explained everything. "Bounty hunters can be any race. My people don't have much to do these days. Many of my sisters have stayed in our homeland, but I’ve always been more open-minded. The only thing I ever wanted to do was get out and travel the world. Becoming a bounty hunter was the best thing I ever did.” Her eyes shifted from mine as she scanned the street. “I thought new guardians always had a partner."
"I do. He has other business today, so I got the day off," I said without enthusiasm, making Femi laugh.
"Not fond of days off?"
"Not really. I don't know anyone. I'm bored out of mind."
"Well, you're in luck. It just so happens I’m free today. We'll make the rounds, but lunch first. My treat."
"The rounds?" I asked, as she pulled me down the sidewalk.
"Yeah, to all the good Abyss hotspots. Didn't your partner teach you anything?"
"I guess not," I said as she yanked me into a bar crowded with unusual creatures. Femi walked up to a table where two wrinkly, grey skinned creatures were sitting. She narrowed her cat eyes at them and they scrambled out of the booth. She looked back at me, flashing a plea
sed grin.
"Booth savers!”
“Looked more like intimidation to me.”
Femi laughed. “Maybe it was. They’re hobgoblins. Tricky little devils, love to pick on humans. They slip up a lot, so bounty hunters tend to make them nervous."
I nodded, looking in the direction they scurried. Why didn't Quintus tell me about places like this? All I got to see was coffee bars. This was so much cooler. I scanned the room. I didn’t see any other guardians, but they were probably all working. "What do they have to eat here?"
"Everything. They cater to all walks of life." Femi leaned back in the booth, openly studying me, but not in a creepy way. She looked at me as if she was trying to piece together a puzzle. She reminded me of me in certain ways. "Why aren't you like the other guardians?" she finally asked.
I shrugged. "I never really fit in during my life. Why would I expect my death to be any different? I’m destined to be alone."
She ignored my pity parade. "That's right. You were human. What’s dying like?"
An image of Holden pointing the gun at me, cold resolve in his eyes, flashed in my mind. "Painful."
She grimaced. "You went bloody, didn't you?" Her headed tilted slightly to the side. "Yeah, you're a fighter. I can see it in your eyes. Do you remember any of it?"
"Every last moment."
"What happened?"
"It's a long story."
She rested her chin on her hands. "I have time."
"I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes; I was tortured then shot in the head."
"That . . . completely sucks."
Laughter overtook me. She was right! It did suck, but it was even worse than she knew. What was I doing here? Making friends wasn’t helping. If anything sympathy made it worse.
"You don’t look like the type to have gotten yourself into such a mess."
"It's hard to say if I found it or it found me."
A waitress came over and Femi ordered fish and chips, while I just got fries. Once the waitress was gone Femi began studying me again until her eyes sparked and she perked up again. "It was over some guy, wasn't it?"